This invention relates to methods for surveying candidates who may be interested in enrolling in an institution of higher education such as a college or university, and for encouraging their attendance.
Increasingly, colleges and universities compete with other institutions to attract and maintain the interest of the best and brightest candidates. The method of the present invention provides real time feedback in a prolonged multi-step sales process for what is a very large investment for the candidates. The present invention enables institutions to gage the interest and suitability of candidates at various points in this process and to increase attendance by personalization and customization of the contacts with the candidate.
The typical pattern of recruitment and admission may be considered in the context of the traditional academic year. A candidate may begin making inquiries in his or her freshman year in high school, or in some cases even earlier. However, the typical high school student generally begins to investigate schools soon after their freshman year. The process of investigation and evaluation continues through the summer and may accelerate in the fall of the student's senior year. During the fall and winter of the high school student's senior year, the candidate may then apply to one or more institutions. However, it is also not uncommon for a candidate to postpone application for one or more years after completion of high school. Thus, the period of time during which the candidate is considering his or her options is often prolonged.
The difficult task of an educational institution, in the months or even years between an initial inquiry and actual matriculation, is to maintain a candidate's continuing interest in the institution and its programs. In addition, it is highly desirable for the institution to evaluate the candidate's continuing suitability for enrollment.
As explained in more detail in co-pending application Ser. No. 09/633,897, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated herein by reference, educational institutions often receive inquiries from prospective student candidates (“candidate”) expressing an interest in attending the institution. Information about the candidates is generally maintained in a data base called an “inquiry pool”, and may include the candidate's contact information, age, geographic area, scholastic and extracurricular interests ethnicity, and other data potentially relevant to the candidate's interest in, or suitability for, attending the institution.
Information about a potential candidate may be derived from many other sources such as the Educational Testing Service, Educational Opportunity Service, National Research Center for College and University Admissions (NRCCUA) or other regional or national information sources. Information from whatever source is desirability added to the data base of candidates.
Historically, a college or university may undertake to mail applications, brochures or information to all or some of the candidates in its inquiry pool in order to maintain or ascertain the candidates' continuing interest in the institution or its programs. The cost for such direct mailings can be very large, particularly where the approach must be broad based because of the spectrum of potential interests of the candidates receiving such a common mailing.
In order to manage costs, colleges or universities may hire telephone polling services to contact candidates in their inquiry pool to ascertain the qualification and continuing level of interest of each candidate. If a candidate is no longer interested in attending the college or university, or is clearly not qualified for admission, the institution may remove the candidate from its list of interested candidates. This method may result in some savings in subsequent mailings. However, the financial cost of such telephone polling service can be expensive and may amount to more than two dollars per candidate surveyed. Furthermore, it may take the telephone polling service up to two months to contact each candidate in a particular inquiry pool.
Other attempts to reduce the cost of providing candidates with promotional materials have involved the use of electronic mail or “e-mail”. While less expensive, e-mail has not proven to be a viable medium for the solicitation of candidates for applications for enrollment, principally because e-mail is impersonal when widely distributed and too time consuming and therefor expensive if personalized and sent one at a time. While applications for enrollment may be forwarded in this manner, this approach lacks the customization and personalization which has been found necessary to gain the attention of candidates over the prolonged period of decision making.
The present invention provides a viable alternative to known expensive and time consuming methods of assessing and maintaining a candidate's interest in a particular institution. In its various embodiments, the method provides an efficient and cost effective method for surveying and evaluating the interest of candidates that are either included in an institution's inquiry pool or who have been identified from various other regional or national information sources. It accepts a wide range of personal information, analyzes the responses and thus centralizes the response methodology from free form to systematic. Through the use of weblinks, the candidate himself effectively introduces his own profile data into the data base, eliminating the need for human intervention and thus facilitating the updating of the data base on a mass basis. The dynamic updating of the data base permits a tailored response for each candidate at each contact, thereby maintaining the essence of personal communication, the most effective communication in a multi-step sales process.
The present invention also facilitates the segmentation of particular candidates within a larger pool according to specific selection criteria that are established by the particular institution, and thus permits a degree of customization unknown in the field. This customization dramatically increases the interest and thus the response of the candidates to the communications from the institution.
In addition, the present invention provides a method of ascertaining a candidate's level of interest in the institution, in real time and repeatedly. Metrics are established for the diverse essentially free form information provided by the candidate and further communications with the candidate are dynamically adapted as a function of the candidate's previous responses and information assembled from other sources.
The time necessary for an institution to evaluate the level of interest of all candidates is significantly reduced. This allows an institution to identify, and target, certain candidates based on specific interests, qualifications or other criteria. With increased knowledge of the degree of interest of the candidates in various segments of the pool, better decisions as to marketing strategy may be made.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to obviate many of the deficiencies of known methods of marketing educational services and to provide a novel method of soliciting information from candidates for enrollment at educational institutions.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a novel and highly effective method for economically determining the interest of selected candidates as an aid in the multi-step marketing process.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a novel method of incentivizing candidates to provide additional information in a form which may be used to in the customizing and personalizing of further communications, thereby stimulating the candidate's continued interest in the institution.
It is yet a further object of the present invention to provide a novel method of evaluating the interest and suitability of candidates over the course of a prolonged solicitation, largely without human intervention.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide a personalized and secure means of contacting and surveying potential candidates to assess their interest in a particular institution, while preserving the integrity of the survey.